Parents, health officials search for answers about sick kids

[pstokely]

Source: Stl Post Dispatch

Kirbi Pemberton pulled her 7-year-old daughter out of Rose Acres Elementary School in Maryland Heights this year over her concerns about potential health risks from the nearby radioactive West Lake Landfill. Another daughter, who goes to Pattonville High School, has missed several days of school this year with headaches, sore throat and other ailments.
Now a state health report has singled out the 63043 ZIP code, which includes both schools, for its high rate of brain and nervous system cancers among children 17 and younger. Pemberton’s oldest daughter Kirstee, who died in 2004 at age 12 of brain cancer that was diagnosed while she attended Rose Acres, was counted among the statistics.

“Ten years later I get slapped in my face with this whole West Lake thing,” Pemberton said. “I feel like I am killing my children. That sweet, beautiful, blond child who would still be here if I just lived somewhere else.”

After the report, state health officials said they would bring Pattonville parents’ concerns to the attention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for a possible evaluation of health risks at the two schools. The schools are less than two miles from the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where World War II-era nuclear waste was dumped in the 1970s and has yet to be cleaned up.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/health/parents-health-officials-search-for-answers-about-sick-kids/article_113fab08-43f8-5d6e-b2f0-6804feb8b9a4.html

[Demeter]

1. Love Canal, all over again.

[pstokely]

3. ever live near there?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/508327822519437/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/217215444963933/

[NeoGreen]

5. Worked, not lived...

... in Niagara Co., NY, as a groundwater scientist for >10-years.

One of my jobs was to maintain and improve the efficiency of a groundwater pump and treat system, that for all practical purposes should not be turned off for the next 1,000-years.

I grew up in WNY and would never willfully choose to own property in southern Niagara County, based on chemistry alone.
The "miracles of science" are everywhere.

Visit. Enjoy the majestic view.

But do not stay.

[Scruffy Rumbler]

2. Not just at this location...

I moved back to my hometown area a few years ago. All the places we were told not to play in as kids, because they were old GE dump sites, are now new apartment complexes and town homes! They are dredging the Hudson near here for the same reason, but haven't talked about the land based dump sites.

[DeadLetterOffice]

9. A similar issue in Pittsfield has been going on for years

A foul ball from the baseball diamond at Allendale Elementary School could land on a large, brown mound that looms over the school yard from the other side of a chain-link fence. The mound — 38 feet high and covered in brown mulch — is a toxic dump that is home to thousands of cubic yards of PCB-contaminated waste taken from the General Electric plant, the Housatonic River and elsewhere.
<snip>
(Allendale school) was built in the 1950s on PCB-contaminated dirt fill that General Electric gave its workers and the community for free. After the pollution was discovered in 1991, most of the grounds were capped, despite the protests of residents and parents. In 1999, the cap was removed, and GE dug up 41,000 cubic yards of polluted soil and rebuilt the baseball diamond, soccer field and playground.

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/headlines/ci_3144854

The 2' soil cap was removed because it was contaminated with PCB's above the 'allowable' amount.
Our society does insane things.

[logosoco]

4. k&r

Interesting and sad. This is all in about the same area as Monsanto and Ferguson. Lots of bad mojo in that part of the state. Much of it will probably get swept under the rug, as usual.
(I am not a conspiracy nut, just noticing what stands out to me )

[Dustlawyer]

6. +1! For exposure (no pun intended). I took the name "Dustlawyer" because I used to work the

"Dust docket". I presented thousands of old men for deposition in asbestos and silica litigation and heard some of the most amazing war stories, as well as seeing first hand the terrible racism that existed in the military and industrial America.
I heard stories of battles I had read about in school, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, Omaha Beach. I met veterans from WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam and heard things that were at times alternating between fantastic and horrifying.
I saw institutional racism where white men starting work at a refinery spent anywhere from a week to two months in the "labor gang" digging ditches and other back breaking labor, before being moved to a trade. The black men at the same plant spent 30 years or so in the labor gang before being moved to the warehouse when they physically could not do the work any longer. This one particular plant donated the land next to the plant for them to live on and build a school for their children. In the 1990's it was discovered they had buried toxic sludge underneath when it started to bubble up on the playground.
I hope that the men who decided to dump the radioactive waste in that landfill cannot sleep at night and dream of the dead children when they do sleep!

[elleng]

11. Thanks for your work, Dustlawyer,

and 'thanks' for the awful info.

[freebrew]

7. A few decades ago...

I attended a meeting given by Mel Carnahan over the topic of creating these landfills. As I recall, he stopped it from happening when he was in state government and I'm assuming while he was governor.

These landfills started appearing right after his plane crashed, IIRC. There was one in St. Charles County listed on GoogleEarth as Uranium Mountain. It's either been moved or erased it seems, as I couldn't find it last time I looked.

Must be a lot of $$$ in hazardous waste, eh?

[packman]

8. How's this for a horror story of haz. waste dumping

When I had a house in SW,Pennsylvania-just below Pittsburgh, I met a guy who was doing work around the neighborhood and we began talking about deer. Somehow he got into disposing of deer carcasses hit on the roads and deers shot during various times of year. He would load them up into his big RV and take them to West Virginia to a place that would use them for skins, meat, whatever. THEN he would get barrels full of toxic crap from various places and bring that crap back to Pennsylvania for dumping. I shudder to think about what (dogs, pigs,people ??) was eating that deer meat that was hauled in that part-time hazard material RV.

[KT2000]

10. CDC will find nothing

except for loopholes as they always do. Coincidence will be their explanation.